


No Simple Gifts

by Nagaem_C



Category: Sacrifice (2016)
Genre: After surviving a horror movie nobody is okay, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Post Traumatic Depression, Probable Suicidal Ideation, cute baby, making amends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 00:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8468890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaem_C/pseuds/Nagaem_C
Summary: After what happened in Scotland, Tora had no choice but to make a clean break. She's moved on and started a new life, back in America, but she doesn't expect her estranged husband to come looking for her...(An open-ended epilogue of sorts, taking place about 9 months after the end of the film.)





	

  
**No Simple Gifts**  


.

 

It's been a long, headache-inducing day. Despite the twisting road with its looming banks of foliage on either side, the late afternoon sun manages to stab unerringly, over and over, through the gap where the sun-visor is broken. Tora screws up her face into a pained squint; she'd put a hand up to block the intermittent glare, but she knows she needs both hands to drive these corkscrewed hills.

 _What the fuck was I thinking,_ she says to herself; the thought is a dry monotone, a stab of bitter doubt that's replayed itself so many times it's become boring. The answer is simple enough—she'd been desperate. Desperate enough to lean on old contacts from her med school days, to press for favors and make promises. Desperate enough to pounce on the meager job offer that had come through as a result, and to be pathetically grateful when her new employer's cousin had provided a suitable rental property outside town as a hiring bonus.

Considering the state their lives had been in, after everything, she knows she should feel more grateful for this fresh start, here in the mountainous semi-suburban wilds of Pennsylvania. They're safe here, sheltered in the woods: far, far away from Scotland's bare, aching stones, and the memory of madmen.

Still, Tora _hates_ to imagine what her work commute will be like once it starts to snow. It's already almost September.

When she pulls up the last hill, her dented SUV's tires crunch and pop over the rough gravel of the drive, announcing her return. Dana is out in the side yard; she turns to give a friendly wave, her other hand shading her eyes.

Tora rummages in her back seat for a minute, scrabbling together the escaped contents of two plastic shopping bags. By the time she's got everything situated, the bags and the milk and her empty Thermos and the bulky leather messenger bag she totes back and forth each day, Dana's attention is back on the yard.

"Hey," Tora says as she bypasses the front of the house and walks up behind her housemate's crouching figure. "You know you've got leaves in your hair."

"Do I?" Dana glances over her shoulder, flashing a quick smile and groping at her thick, dark ponytail.

"Yeah, a whole clump. Were you and Wessie exploring today?"

At hearing his name, Wesley looks up from the spread picnic blanket that occupies nearly a quarter of the fenced area. He lifts a chunky plastic ring in greeting and lets loose an exuberant squeal of multisyllabic chatter.

Abandoning her attempt to pluck out the leaves, Dana chuckles and leans over to scoop him up and get to her feet. "No, but we did play roll-over for a bit. I'm bigger than the blanket. Here, Wes, say hello to Tora!"

"Bo!" shouts Wes, giggling when Dana tilts him in for a loud kiss on the cheek.

"You're practically bigger than the _yard_ ," says Tora, eyeing their postage-stamp of cleared land. Underbrush and snarled branches grope through the chain links at the back of it, blocking the view to the sharp slope and the road below. The yard itself is pocked with hard nubs of roots and rocks, hidden among the hardy, uneven tufts of grass. They could be dug out, maybe, with heavy equipment—in her mind's eye she sees muddy holes, and shudders.

"It's fine. You know it's fine. This is a good place," Dana says firmly. She walks ahead of Tora and pulls at the rattling screen door that leads straight into the eat-in kitchen, holding it open. Once everyone is inside, she clears her throat and says, "Tor—we had a visitor today, while Wes was down for his nap."

Tora hums questioningly, occupied with putting up the groceries.

"It was Duncan," Dana continues, and when Tora's head whips around she quickly adds, "now, now; I didn't let him in! But—"

"He shouldn't have found us." The fridge slams shut hard enough to jingle the glass bottles inside. "He shouldn't have come looking!"

"It's not as if we've changed our names, duck." As always, the gentle burr of Dana's accent is soothing, a voice of optimistic reason poised to pull Tora from the edge. "You mustn't panic."

"I'm not panicking!" To prove it, she snatches the Thermos from the counter and starts rinsing out the coffee dregs, stabbing in the long dish brush as hard as she can. "What did you tell him?"

"Not much," Dana sighs. "Just when to expect you home from work."

" _Dana_!"

"I couldn't very well pretend you weren't living here! Look, I don't think he's a threat. He just wants the chance to say his piece."

Tora drops the Thermos into the drying rack beside an assortment of sippy cups, frowning. Then Wes breaks the tension with another stream of emphatic babble.

"Yes, I know! It's almost your suppertime, isn't it, little love?" Bouncing the boy in her arms, Dana follows Tora across the room. "I told Duncan you'd be working late, today. Not home 'til seven, I said. Look, I'm dying to take a bath; could you spell me for a bit? I thought maybe the rest of the peas from yesterday, and there's a few bread rolls left..."

"He liked the sweet potatoes, last week," Tora remembers.

"All right, but don't give him too much of those, okay? You weren't here for that nappy change."

"Noted," Tora says, with a smiling mock salute, and dutifully accepts an armload of her friend's happily squirming baby.

 

 

Wesley Christopher Tulloch is a sweet-tempered child, at least eighty percent of the time. Tora's not at all ashamed to admit that he's the light of her life, despite the fact that he isn't her own; the folks in town seem to assume that she and Dana are a married couple, to understandably varying levels of acceptance. It isn't too far off the truth, anyway. They'd been well on the way to close friendship, before everything went to hell on the island. And afterwards, they'd fallen in together almost without thought, quickly building a partnership of mutual support. She'd intended to be this baby's adoptive mother, of course, well before she'd known the truth about him. So it feels fitting that she's almost exactly that, now: parent in all but name.

As usual, taking Wes into her arms is like flipping a light switch—all the shadowed places in her seem to disappear, and the looming, lonely emptiness loses its foothold for a while. It's intoxicating, almost addictive, to be the center of this tiny person's attention...distracting enough, tonight, that she loses herself in the comfort of the evening routine, enjoying the sweet late summer breeze that's giving their antique air conditioner a rest, and forgetting all about her promised visitor.

The knowledge comes back to her in a jarring rush, though, when post-feeding cleanup time is interrupted by a tapping on the rickety screen door behind her. Her head snaps around. "Duncan," she says, hiding the snag in her breathing—the embarrassing wobble in her voice—and he takes it as permission to work the latch and tentatively step inside.

"Hello, Tora." His gaze drops to the baby in her lap, and he freezes in place. "Ah—"

She swallows hard. _God, he still looks good._ "This is Wesley. Wes," she tells him, studying the lick of soft, dark curls to prevent herself staring.

"Wesley," repeats Duncan, his voice soft. There's a long moment of reverent silence before he shifts on his feet and speaks again. "So...it was a bit of a challenge, finding this place."

 _It was supposed to be,_ Tora thinks. "This road has a different name on every map I've ever seen."

"Yeah, no kidding. Wasn't even sure I was in the right _town_ , 'til I met a sweet old lady at the library who was kind enough to tell me where ' _Donna Hamilton_ and her wife, the doctor' could be found." He exaggerates the Americanized pronunciation, a soft smirk playing around his lips—Tora's eyes skitter away again, and she reaches for the washcloth.

"Well, that could only be Mrs. Eddings: she keeps asking Dana where to mark our anniversary on her calendar. But I've been thinking 'Tora Tulloch' has a nicer ring to it, anyway." She says it flippantly, her attention back on wiping Wesley's sticky cheeks, but she hears Duncan's indrawn breath and is both proud and ashamed that her words have stung: she'd never considered changing her name for _him_ , after all. Her professional reputation had meant more.

Not that she has much reputation left to stand on, now that she's changed jobs and continents twice in three years, and has been reduced to filling in at a cut-rate women's clinic.

"Why now?" she asks, her teasing mood evaporated. Wes burbles and splutters as she rubs off a particularly stubborn mark. "Why are you here, Duncan?"

"I needed to see you. I've missed you. Do you—can I sit down?"

Tora waves curtly at the free seat, already standing to answer the baby's steadily rising demand for a refilled cup of milk. She takes care of the request one-handed, automatically responding in murmured endearments as Wes pats her hair and coos eagerly. Behind her, chair legs chirrup on the laminate flooring, and then a set of car keys clatters onto the tabletop.

Duncan watches her, unspeaking, until she resettles Wes in the highchair. "You're good with him," he murmurs, "and he's a beautiful little boy, isn't he..."

Wes decides, at that point, that the stranger has been nearby long enough to become interesting; he releases his sippy cup and reaches out across the small table, and Duncan immediately gives over the keys to his rented Audi for examination. While he sits mesmerized by the baby, Tora finally makes herself really look at the man.

It's the same handsome face she remembers so well, simultaneously rugged and boyish, but there seem to be new lines bracketing his dark eyes, and a few lighter glints break up the previously uniform mahogany of his hair. Duncan must have been living out of suitcases for a few days, at least, but his sense of style remains effortless: crisp dark denim and a moss green button-down shirt that had likely cost him hundreds of pounds each, his sleeves rolled up perfectly for that casual, approachable effect...

Tora knows it's all calculated, that suave Guthrie perfection she'd swooned for five years ago, a crafted persona that's been practiced until it's ingrained, seamless and natural. She knew it, even at the beginning—soon after Duncan swept her off her feet like a fantasy prince, he'd opened up just enough about his overbearing father and the pressure to excel that she'd _understood_ why he'd remade himself that way. She'd accepted it, and had let herself love him for it, and had married him without concern that the flawed secret self he'd hidden away held anything more sinister than the usual dramas of adolescence...eventually, she'd forgotten to question it, forgotten that Duncan Guthrie was anything other than her knight in shining armor, because he loved her so obviously, so undoubtedly.

But it's _always_ been a performance of perfection. As calculated as the methodical self-administered injections, the show of shock and grief each time they'd done their job—each time she'd endured the pain of unexplained loss, and he'd believed it all _justified_ in exchange for keeping her alive at his side—

"Stop," Tora says.

"It's okay, he won't hurt it," Duncan assures her, but one glance at her and his eyes go wide, the tender smile dropping from his face. He retrieves the key fob at once, earning a whine of protest.

Tora raises her voice towards the back of the house. "Dana? Come get Wes, please?"

They watch each other warily, caught in a tense pause like wild animals circling before a fight. The door at the end of the hall opens almost at once and Dana comes out in sweats and a faded police academy T-shirt, trying obviously to look casual, as if she hadn't been listening through her bedroom door.

Duncan's eyes don't leave Tora's for more than a split second as he gives Dana a polite nod. "Ms. Tulloch."

"Mr. Guthrie," she returns, just as neutrally, gathering Wes up and bearing him promptly away, and Tora stifles a sigh of relief. Better that they be alone. Better not to watch her husband smiling at the boy who could have been his son.

 _Their_ son.

 

 

They wait and listen until the sounds of the baby are safely muffled behind the closing door. Duncan breaks their guarded silence first. "I'm sorry to intrude on you both. I know you aren't pleased to see me."

"No, I'm not," agrees Tora. "But I suppose you were bound to look me up, at some point. I left unfinished business." In the midst of the upheaval, with officials swarming the Guthrie property and body after body being recovered from the bogs, the question of divorce had been the last thing on her mind. Putting distance between herself and Scotland had been far more important. Still, she hadn't expected to see Duncan so soon. Perhaps he hadn't been directly involved in the previous rituals, and certainly he'd attempted to stop the last one, but foreknowledge was equal to complicity, wasn't it?

Clearly, Duncan isn't above using his inheritance to leverage the law in his favor.

"I'm not here for that," he says, surprising her. "If that's really what you want, I'll have the papers drawn up. But I was hoping you might let me help you, instead."

"What do you mean?"

"I sold the estate."

It startles her into an unkind laugh. "You actually found a buyer. Impressive. How'd you advertise it? _Exclusive Cult Murder Complex, Seventy-eight Acres_?"

"Damn it, I _wanted_ to burn it to the bloody ground! But I settled for making full demolition a condition of the sale. The Guthrie mansion is no more, Tora. Everything from the tool shed to the accursed cellars is gone. And the cottage property, too. I made sure of it. Started the work myself before I entertained any offers, and lived out of a room at the Briar Inn for four months after the sale, to make sure it got done."

"Good."

"I swear to you, if there was a way to undo what they did, I—I'd do anything. You have to _know_ that."

She doesn't know what to say, and her stomach is quivering with the effort of holding her emotions in check, so it seems safest not to say anything at all. The longer she stares him down, the more broken his expression becomes; she freezes, watching in fascination as the cracks in his paper-thin façade widen further.

 _I knew you,_ she realizes with a small, ringing shock. _You started to show me, on the island, months before it all went crazy. And I thought it was another act._

"Tora." His voice is rough, and barely louder than the sounds of the running refrigerator behind her. "Do you doubt that I love you?"

"I know you did," she says, shakily.

"I _do_. Please."

"I don't know what you're asking me for."

"I want to do something good for you. It's the only thing I can think about. I'm not asking forgiveness, I know I don't deserve—"

"You think throwing _money_ around is going to solve anything?"

"Keeping it for myself won't do me any good! I'll have no need of it. You should be comfortable. You like it here, right? Do you want for anything?"

"What I want—" Her throat closes on itself, and her eyes blur with the beginnings of tears. _Time travel would be a good fucking start._

"If you won't take anything for yourself, fine—but, the little one," he pleads, leaning forward until the chair creaks. "I can set up a trust, a savings account for emergency funds, help out with insurance costs..."

"He's not your son," Tora hisses, grateful that she can hear faint singing down the hall. No eavesdropping, at the moment.

"No, he's not—and that's all the more reason! Because he's _not_. I wasted my chance for a child, because I'd been afraid of my father all my life, and my grandfather before him! Because I couldn't think of another way, but I couldn't bear the thought of them touching _you_ , and taking you, like they took—" He breaks off with a high, choked sound, staring down at his opening and closing hands.

The ritual chamber's wall of photographs rises up in her memory: the grainy image of her husband as a little boy, wide-eyed and solemn at Richard Guthrie's knee, and the second formal portrait taken at college-age, exactly as starved of emotion as the first. No mother—she'd known, of course. But she hadn't really given it thought.

After a moment, Duncan collects himself and continues hollowly, "I was a coward, and I can _never_ change what I did. How I hurt you. You will never know how sorry I am."

She hears her own whisper, distantly: " _Duncan_."

He keeps his head down, forearms braced on his knees as if a massive weight sits across his back. "And since I already know you don't love me anymore..."

"That's not true," Tora interrupts him, lifting a hand to swipe barely-felt wetness from her face. "Maybe it should be, but it's not. Still, it's—I can't, Duncan. It hurts too much."

He nods at the floor and sighs.

There's a pause, while she goes to pour herself a glass of water, and she feels his eyes follow her across the room; he doesn't ask, but she pours him one, too. When she offers it to him, their fingertips brush.

He turns the glass between his palms, contemplating, then takes a deep drink and quietly asks, "Will you let me have an account set up? Please, you won't have to deal with me. I've got a solicitor waiting to handle the funds, he'll arrange everything to your specifications. And it's fine if you never use it, I just want it to be there."

"Well...if that's what you want to do, I suppose Dana and I won't stop you. We don't need handouts—but you're right. Wesley's future security is important."

"Damn right, it is. And so is yours! That bastard prick deserves to _pay_ for hurting you and your friend," declares Duncan, looking up; suddenly he's wearing the same fierce, avenging expression she'd seen on the island, the night he'd killed two men to secure her escape. "All he cared about was his perfect legacy, his everlasting fucking _bloodright_! So I've spent the last nine months tearing down everything he built, burning his little empire and scattering the ashes—and when I'm finished, _nothing that came from him will be left_!"

Tora blinks at him, a cold knot of understanding sinking in her gut. Her husband's brown eyes are practically incandescent in their conviction, feverish with the anticipated relief of having his mission complete.

_You won't have to deal with me. I'll have no need of it. You will never know. Nothing that came from him..._

"Thank you for traveling all this way for us," she says, deliberately setting down her half-drunk glass and extending her hand. Puzzled at her sudden formality, he does the same; instead of merely shaking his hand to seal their agreement, though, she follows her impulse and pulls him up to stand, drawing him into a hug that makes something inside her want to curl up sobbing.

One last embrace...one last chance to feel these strong, warm arms wrapped around her, to breathe in his clean, familiar scent, to gasp and squeeze her eyes shut at the still unwanted feeling that _this_ is what she's been missing, all this time she's felt so empty...

"Please," she whispers, "don't—whatever it is you're planning, don't do it. Don't give up, Duncan."

He goes tense in her arms. "You don't understand. There's nothing—"

"No, don't say that!" Fear twists up, high and tight, beneath Tora's ribcage. The room around them seems to slide out of focus; she clutches at fistfuls of his shirt, briefly dizzy. "Don't."

Duncan had always been perfect, always in control. Duncan had always been _there_.

He pulls away first, searching her worried eyes sadly. "I...I should go," he says. "Flight, tomorrow. I'll have my solicitor get in touch with you soon."

"Promise me you won't—do anything stupid?" She can't bring herself to say the words aloud.

"Tora."

" _Promise me_ , Duncan."

Finally he gives her the shadow of a smile. "Oh, love. See what you still do to me: I've never been able to tell you no, have I. Much as I tried, back in Boston."

She nods, wrapping her arms tight around herself—it's a poor comfort. "I remember. You were dead set against getting into a serious relationship. Honestly, you probably should've tried harder to brush me off..."

" _You_ weren't the one who proposed, the next spring."

"No."

They fall quiet together; those sweet memories are slotting themselves into less pleasant context, now. Eventually Duncan shakes his head, with a wistful smile, and rests his hand on the latch of the screen door.

"If you, ah, feel like you need to check up on me. You could call. My number hasn't changed."

She nods. "Maybe I'll start calling once a week, then. Just to be sure you're still out there."

"You don't need to trouble yourself—"

"Well, neither did you," says Tora; she feels the threat of tears again, and makes an abrupt shooing gesture at him. "Go on, get going; I've got things to get done tonight. Safe travels, Duncan."

The screen swings and claps shut behind him when he goes; its familiar, emphatic slam echoes from the surrounding forested hills, at odds with the gentle way he'd slipped out. She steps up to the open door and watches him crunch his way slowly across the gravel to the shiny rented car. The last rays of the setting sun catch in his hair and dapple breezy shadows over his back.

_I want to go back to when it was easy. When loving you didn't hurt._

"All right, duck?" asks Dana from behind her.

"No," she answers honestly, after a moment. "But maybe I will be, someday."

 

 

\-----

 


End file.
